


Pick me from the dark (and pull me from the grave)

by kirargent



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (sort of), Allura Lives, Astral Projection, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, Flirting, POV Alternating, Post-Canon Fix-It, Resurrection, Space Magic, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-12 14:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirargent/pseuds/kirargent
Summary: He says “Allura,” like he’s been punched in the stomach and what comes out of him is her name instead of air. The blue glow fades; his vision is unaltered, clear, filled by the familiar figure standing only yards away against the starry backdrop of the astral plane.“Are you—Is this—” Lance swallows hard. “Are you really—?”She’s smiling with tears in her eyes when she steps closer. She takes one slow, regal step; then she breaks and runs to him, biting hard into her bottom lip.





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows up late with starbucks* hey voltron was bad, huh?
> 
> Basically canon compliant except 1: no gays are buried and 2: I'm tossing out the timeline of that epilogue, so there's no year-long time skip.
> 
> title & chapter titles from half awake's "still feel" ((which ironically, I actually recommend listening to and thinking about astral plane!shiro, I think that's how it Hits Hardest but I couldn't resist this title for this piece so here we are.))

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allura kisses him, and his cheeks burn.

She becomes radiance itself: glaring, blinding light, a reverse silhouette.

Then she disappears.

Lance’s cheeks burn, and so do his eyes, and so does his clogged throat, and so do his knees as they hit the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

_10 Days Later._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teal stains the lower half of Lance’s vision. Emanating from just below his eyes, the glow colors his view of the stars and the sky and the lions spearing their way into the far distance.

He grits his teeth and slams forward on the MFE’s controls.

Relief punches him in the gut. He’s devastatingly glad he learned to fly one of these things after the end of the last big fight with Honerva—it was the nearest available spacecraft when the lions took off and his cheekbones began to burn for the first time since Allura left.

He pushes the ship as fast as it can go, streaking after the lions. Their shapes become smaller and smaller against the black sky. “Come _on!_ ” he shouts.

A screen beeps. He has an _incoming call from:_ _Hunk Garrett_. This is warranted. Lance did, after all, just sprint from the dinner table to the ship hangar with no explanation whatsoever.

Lance slams a button and sends the call away. He leans into the controls, trying to will the MFE to go faster. It doesn’t, because it can’t.

The lions become pinpricks, and the pinpricks disappear, and Lance yells, “FUCK!”

He doesn’t let up on the controls for twenty-seven more minutes.

As soon as he cuts the engine, the silence is abrupt. Space is vast and cold and silent, silent, silent. His own breathing is loud.

He’s sure the team took off after him when he didn’t answer their calls, but he shut his comms off and had a head start. He’s alone in Earth’s atmosphere.

The screens around him make only the slightest _hum_ , but as his ears adjust to the smothering silence, the tiny sound becomes noticeable, distinctive.

He says, numbly, to himself, “No.” He breathes in fast, then hard out. “ _No._ ”

He curls his hands around the ship’s controls and squeezes his eyes shut, because there’s still a blue glow bleeding up into his vision, and it makes him feel sick. It’s dark behind his eyelids, like the black of the sky but without the stars.

Wait.

Lance squeezes his eyes more tightly closed.

Wait a minute.

He takes a slow breath in and lets a trickle of his consciousness wander out from himself. Could he…? It didn’t work the last time he tried to connect to Blue, but the way her eyes glowed—the mirroring way his cheekbones are tingling—the way she’d roared as she leapt into the sky—

A feeling bursts in Lance’s chest like a foot punching through ice and opening a gap to swirling, speeding water below. His ribcage feels filled like a sudden inrushing of cold water. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, _Blue_.”

He holds his eyes shut, overwhelmed, now. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this.

And then—something else, also. Warmer, sharper, barely there, just around the edges…

Lance snaps his eyes open, and then his mouth falls open, too.

He says “ _Allura_ ,” like he’s been punched in the stomach and what comes out of him is her name instead of air. The blue glow fades; his vision is unaltered, clear, filled by the familiar figure standing only yards away against the starry backdrop of the astral plane.  “Are you—Is this—” Lance swallows hard. “Are you really—?”

She’s smiling with tears in her eyes when she steps closer. She takes one slow, regal step; then she breaks and runs to him, biting hard into her bottom lip.

“Lance,” she says, reaching for him, eyes glimmering. She grabs for him, and they connect. It feels nothing like the physical plane, nothing like mass meeting mass.

But it’s _something_ , for sure.

These forms are barely tangible, just carefully arranged bits of chaos, bodily shapes made of organized energy that feels like warm, moving liquid. Allura grips him in a hug, and it’s warm energy meeting warm energy, somehow both less and more real than the feeling of touching on the physical plane.

“How?” he says, pulling back and cradling her gloved hands. He’s thinking that he’s never gonna let go of her hands, ever. That seems like a good plan. “The same as Shiro?”

Her eyes roam his face, over and over again, searching and tracing and memorizing. “I believe so,” she says. Her shoulders lift delicately, then fall. “It would seem the most likely explanation.”

“Are you,” Lance says. “Is this…?”

 _Real_ seems like a strange word. What does it even mean, exactly?

What he finally says instead, his voice wobbling, is: “This means we can bring you back, right?”

Allura’s eyes shine. Lance is pretty sure he’s going to be uninterested in looking at anything other than those glittering eyes for the entire rest of his life.

“I think so,” she says, voice at once heavy and light with all the emotion it carries. “Yes.” Her smile is tiny, but Lance feels sure it could power the whole universe.

  

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Still feel (alive)

 

 

Allura says, “I believe my consciousness is trapped in the same manner Shiro's was,” and also says, “It's incredible that I can feel _you_ through my connection with Blue,” and also, “The others—they made it out safely?” all in one string, as if those statements form one cohesive train of thought.

Lance is just—blinking at her. Wide eyes, mildly blushed cheeks, mouth a small, narrow shape of surprise.

“Lance.” She frees a hand to poke him in the shoulder; he grabs after it to pull it back into his grasp, looking alarmed to have lost it. Allura laughs lightly.

“Lance,” she says gently.

He blinks a few more times. She watches the line of his jaw sharpen and his eyes become clear and focused. He nods once.

“Don’t worry, everyone made it out. Next, we’re gonna get _you_ out of here,” he says firmly. “We’ll figure out how, just like with Shiro.” His grip on her hands tightens. “Do you know how it happened, exactly? Maybe that could help us get you out.”

Allura sinks to her knees, tugging on Lance’s hands to get him to follow. She folds her legs to sit cross-legged on the solid but invisible surface below them. Stars pepper the sky in every direction around them, including downward. On this plane, all there is is the vastness of space.

They sit within the vastness, the two of them together, tiny. Lance sits mirroring her, their bent knees touching, armor to armor. Their connected hands don’t separate once. He watches her with a calm, curious focus that makes her feel so warm she wants to look away.

“I…” She frowns; his hands immediately grasp hers more tightly, which makes her smile instead. “There is so much I should tell you,” she says. She holds his gaze, chewing her lip as she tries to organize her thoughts.

The version of Lance before her is collected and stable, his eyes not twinkling with laughter but instead deep and serious. “Start at the beginning,” he suggests. “What happened after you—left?”

Allura nods. “Honerva and I—we restored the realities.” She frowns; a spike of fear drives into her chest. “Wait a tick. We did succeed, right? It did work?”

Lance nods rapidly, squeezing her hands. “Yeah. Yeah, it did. You did it.” His small smile lights something aflame inside her.

“Honerva…” she breaks off, gaze focusing on a patch of stars just beyond Lance’s shoulder.

Honerva’s grim face flickers in her vision, an afterimage, a memory so emotion-soaked that it still carries physical sensations.

Exhaustion so bone-deep it hurts. Energy still being dragged from her being. A zip of terror up her spine as she feels weaker, weaker—and then Honerva’s hand on her shoulder, soft smile directed at her, and a _snap_ , a cutting off, the outpouring faucet of Allura’s quintessence wrenched closed.

“She saved me, Lance.” Allura meets his gaze again, holding it. She has to convey to him—He must know. The world must. “At the last possible moment, she saved me. She severed her energy from mine, untethering me from the threads of the realities just before it could consume the last of my quintessence.” Allura’s voice shakes ever so slightly. “I remained on this plane, though my body was destroyed. I am only here thanks to one final kindness in Honerva’s last moments.”

Allura closes her eyes. Honerva’s face is still in her vision.

Warm energy grazes her cheek.

Lance.

His hand cradles her jaw. He’s not wearing gloves, and Allura wishes she could feel the touch of his skin in the physical plane. The contact is warm and tingling where their energy-forms touch; he traces her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb, and Allura’s throat feels sticky. She clears it.

“Anyway.” She licks her lips. “My energy was severely depleted,” she explains, falling into a crisp, prim tone clear of any sticky emotion. “It was some time before I even came to exist fully on this plane, and more time still before I could reach out to Voltron.”

“That was you,” Lance says. “I knew that was you. You called the lions?”

Allura inclines her head. “Yes.”

Lance’s eyes narrow. “ _All_ of them? Allura…How?”

Allura recaptures Lance’s hand from her cheek, aligning her fingers between his and staring at the crisscross pattern of them, black gloves and bare fingers.

“I don’t _know_ ,” she admits. “I mean, not exactly.” She lets their hands fall to rest on her knee, not unlacing their fingers. “I think…The way I can feel you connected to the Blue Lion even as I am...It must have something to do with that.” She frowns, eyebrows lowering. “There is more we yet don't understand about the Lions of Voltron.”

She releases both of Lance’s hands at once, suddenly unsatisfied, cold, unanchored. She leans closer, gripping his elbows instead. Their forearms touch all the way to their wrists and hands, long, tethering, comforting lines of contact. Lance’s hands curve around her elbows to match, and she feels immensely more grounded.

She watches his face carefully, eyes narrowed. “I reached out to Blue from the astral plane, but you connected with her as well, Lance—I could _feel_ it. We both connected with the Blue Lion simultaneously. It’s a profit of our trust in each other, you and me.”

Lance’s brows lower; a frown tugs the corners of his mouth. “What are you saying, Allura?”

Allura opens her mouth but doesn’t speak.

What is she saying, exactly?

She laughs instead of answering, and Lance blinks at her in surprise.

“I don’t know!” she tells him. “Lance, I don’t know what it means.” She’s smiling, suddenly, and can’t seem to stop. “But that’s okay! I'll return, and we'll figure it out together. As always.”

Lance looks bewildered, but he returns her smile. “Yeah.” His voice is gooey-warm, and it makes her stomach twist. “A team. Like always.”

She feels a shift in the air. She’s explained her circumstances; they’ve agreed they’ll solve these next challenges as a team. The time for Lance to leave draws nearer.

She cannot bear it. Not so soon, not when she’s just found him again, not when she’s been here alone for at least a full movement.

Allura bites her lip. She shouldn’t keep him here; she should let him return to the others, who are undoubtedly worried for him. She should not be selfish.

There’s a small, bright flame that sparks in her chest as his eyes hold her own, and his arms are meltingly warm against hers, and she has been so, so lonely for so, so long, and she literally just _died_ , and Allura is selfish.

“Have I ever told you I tried to bond with the Blue Lion using a pick-up line?” she blurts.

“No way. You did not!”

A laugh bubbles out of her. “I did! I truly did! It was the time Lotor was tracking us and we became separated. I needed desperately to connect with her, and I thought: ‘well, what would Lance do?’”

Lance laughs so hard he leans forward with it, his scrunched eyes sparkling. A warm feeling floods all the way through Allura.

“What line did you use?” Lance asks. They are closer together now, both of them leaning forward. Allura can see Lance’s faint freckles. “My best line was always ‘Are you from outer space?” He smirks. “Because your body is out of this _world_.’”

Allura grins. “I believe I told her she was ‘really activating my particle barrier.’”

“Okay, mine was _way_ better.” Lance shakes his head. “Man, I gotta have a talk with Blue. She can’t go around falling for just any old pick up line!”

Allura unfolds one of her legs to kick him lightly in the center of the chest, not hard enough to actually push him away. “Oh, shut up. She was helpless before my radiant charm.”

“Oh, please!” Lance looks momentarily affronted, but a sly grin soon returns. “You’ve got nothing on Loverboy Lance.”

Allura eyes his blue shoulder armor and his white chest plate, one eyebrow raised. She thinks, ludicrously: _Yes, I’d like to see_ nothing _on Loverboy Lance_.

And oh, no. No no no no no.

Are pick-up lines contagious? How is this happening to her? _Why_ is this happening to her?

Her cheeks flood with a warm feeling, and she wonders, vaguely panicked, whether she can blush while she’s a semi-tangible energy arrangement on the astral plane. She hopes not. Her eyes rest on Lance’s cheeks, which have been pink-tinged nearly since he’d first arrived.

Well. So much for that hope.

“I believe that the lions are not far outside of Earth’s orbit,” she says to change the subject, “should you wish to retrieve them. I drew them only far enough away that you would be unable to reach them manually and be forced to seek them on the astral plane.”

Lance shakes his head, looking at her with soft eyes. “Geez. That’s smart.” There’s no smirk, no wink, no undertone of suggestiveness in his tone. Allura refrains from shivering.

He should return to the others soon. She can see in the way his eyes trace over and over her face that he knows it, too.

He slides his hands down her forearms to once more grip her hands. “We’ll have to figure out a way to—I mean, we’ll need—We have to figure out how to get you a body, I guess. But we’ll get you back, Allura.” His eyes are burning, burning, burning, and Allura is made of bone-dry kindling that catches and flares up in an instant.

She says, “Lance,” and pulls one of his hands, wrapping it in both of hers, close to her heart.

“I know,” he murmurs. She watches his mouth shape the words. She knows his mouth is soft, knows from the handful of kisses they’d allowed themselves before facing what might’ve been the end of the universe. She is so glad it was not the end of the universe. She feels like the very particles of energy she’s currently made of are each fluttering with how badly she wants to kiss him again.

She looks back up to his eyes, and yes, he’s definitely looking at her lips, as well. She smiles, a small one, crooked.

Lance’s eyes return to her own, and he returns the smile, eyes sparkling. He squeezes her hands.

She doesn’t have to say anything. They’re on the same wavelength, somehow. They hold each other’s hands tightly, and neither of them leans in any closer.

 _Not yet_ , the space between them whispers. _Not yet, not here_.

“We’ll get you back _soon,_ okay?” Lance promises, eyes still burning.

“Okay.” Allura manages to smile. “Soon.” She squeezes his hands one last time, and squeezes her eyes closed. “Now go.”

She opens her eyes, and he is gone, and the sky is vast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the guy’s credit, Hunk _tries_ to yell at him. It’s just that his voice comes out pretty wobbly, and cracks halfway through the “God _damn_ it Lance,” and the punctuating hug only further undercuts the yelling.

“Woah, guys,” Lance says into Hunk’s shoulder. He’s barely hopped out of the MFE.

“Are you okay?” Pidge demands before Hunk has released him. “What was that about? What’s going on?”

Hunk lets him go with a sniffle and a clap on the shoulder.

Keith gives him a narrow-eyed “What the hell was that?” followed momentarily by “…Are you okay?”

He gets a tight-lipped look from Shiro, a huge hand on his shoulder, and a clinically detached “What happened out there, Lance?” even though he can blatantly see how concern has made Shiro’s expression soft around the eyes.

Hunk is watching him worriedly. “Yeah, man. What was all that?”

“Allura,” Lance says. His chest is filled with the word; it spills from his mouth a few times before he can get out anything else. “Allura, Allura, she’s—It’s Allura.”

Hunk’s brows come together in concern. Keith’s still silently scanning Lance for injuries, eyes now tracking carefully down his lower legs.

“I _knew_ it," says Pidge.

Lance takes a deep breath. His cheeks hurt—oh, that’s a smile, he’s smiling, huge, grinning like a downright idiot. “She’s alive. She’s still out there. She’s okay. Guys, she’s okay.” Oh, fuck, he’s crying now. He must’ve forgotten to cry while he was with her, but now here come the tears. “She’s alive!” He makes a noise that’s maybe laughter but sort of sounds sob-ish.

“Slow down,” Shiro reminds him. “Then explain.”

Lance nods. His fingers flutter at his sides. “She’s still alive. Like how Shiro stayed alive in Black, remember? It was—she said Honerva saved her.”

“ _What_ ,” says Hunk.

“So, we’ll need a body then, huh?” says Pidge. She plops to the ground, setting a tablet in front of her and beginning to poke at it.

Keith leans against the MFE fighter Lance just returned to the hangar, crossing his arms. “You’re sure it was real? It was her?”

Lance narrows watery eyes in his direction. “Yes. It was.”

“And she thinks we can pull her out like we did with Shiro?” Hunk asks.

Lance drops to the floor beside Pidge and falls to his back. The concrete is cold through his jacket. “Yeah. We’ve basically done this before. Just a quick encore performance.”

Hunk sits beside him, looking thoughtful.

“This is _perfect_ timing.” Pidge’s eyes are luminous. “Some of the Olkari refugees were _just_ telling me a couple days ago about their cloning research! I’m pulling up the details now, but it was really advanced. They’ll definitely be able to help us get started. And I’ve got a DNA sample, obviously, so that won’t be a problem. And—”

“You’ve got a _what_ ,” says Keith.

Pidge blinks. He’s still leaning against the MFE, his arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Pidge frowns up at him.

“Oh, snap,” Hunk says.

Everyone shifts their gaze to him, even Lance from his vantage point on the floor.

“That’s right. You weren’t there, Keith.” Hunk claps Pidge on the shoulder. “Me and Pidge took DNA samples for everybody like ages ago, but I guess it was while you were off on your whole self-discovery quest thing.”

“Holy shit.” Pidge hits Lance in the arm and prods at Hunk’s thigh with her foot. “Holy shit, guys, I only _just_ realized: that means I took a sample from clone Shiro, not real Shiro.” She frowns. “I guess it’s identical though, huh?”

Hunk strokes his chin. “Yeah. I mean, it should be.”

“Okay,” Keith says, hooking one foot over the other. “We have DNA, and Pidge has a lead on how to actually create a body. Do we know how Allura was able to transfer Shiro’s consciousness last time? How are we gonna pull that off without her?”

“She looked good,” Lance muses, staring up at the ceiling of the hangar high, high above. His hands are folded idly behind his head, protecting his skull from the cold, hard floor.

He can’t be expected to hold a serious conversation right now. Like, seriously. He just saw Allura again; he just held her hands and looked into her eyes again. He’s having a _moment_ , okay?

“Like, healthy, you know?” Lance’s chest feels filled to bursting with warmth. “Not at _all_ like her physical body just died. I mean, who knew existing as an astral body gave you such glowy skin?” He sighs. “I would _totally_ die if it meant I could look that radiant.”

Hunk says, tiredly, “Way too soon, Lance.”

“Can we stay focused, please?” Keith’s voice is strained.

“Keith brings up a good point,” Shiro says. “We don’t know how Allura transferred me from the astral plane into this body. It might be difficult to replicate without her.”

“It’s gotta be so lonely, I bet,” Lance says.

The hangar ceiling is all narrow gray support beams and vast gray panels, broken up here and there by rectangular skylights. No light enters through the skylights at this hour; past the glare of the long fluorescents, the stars are barely even decipherable in the night sky.

“I’m thinking we should try to spend a lot of time there with her while we’re figuring this all out. Keep her updated and stuff. Plus like, keep her company, so she doesn’t have to be there all by herself.” He flicks his eyes to Keith, setting his mouth in a determined line. He’s ready to argue his point, if needed.

But rather than scowl and demand that Lance stay focused, Keith just nods. “Okay.”

Lance blinks at him.

“That’s a good idea, Lance,” Hunk says. “We’ll have to go anyway so we can ask her about how she brought Shiro back, so that makes sense. Plus, I mean. I miss her.”

“We can set up shifts!” Pidge suggests. “So she’s never too long in the fucking _void_ without company. Good thinking, Lance.”

Lance shoots her with a finger gun. “What can I say? I’m a brilliant guy.”

Hunk snorts, and Lance gives an indignant “Hey!” and lifts himself from the floor to tackle his best bud, tugging him into a headlock.

Pidge rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she gets to her feet. “I’m gonna go call a friend, see when we can start working on this clone thing. When I get back we’re going to go see Allura. Wait for me!” She pauses before she goes, levelling a finger at Keith. “Also, I know that Adam finally let Shiro take him on a date last night, and I expect _full_ details.”

Shiro gives her a stern look. “No gossiping about my love life.”

“Why do you think I have details?” Keith asks. His eyes simmer with laughter. “I mean, I do. I do have details. I stayed late at the training deck so I could ‘accidentally’ bump into them as soon as they got back to base.”

Shiro shoves him.

“Knew I could count on you,” Pidge says warmly to Keith before turning and jogging from the hangar.

Lance drops Hunk from the headlock, leaning back on his hands. “They finally had a date?! Keith. Buddy! How long were you gonna hold out on us?”

Shiro raises his hands in surrender and leaves the room.

Keith stares at Lance. “Uh,” he says. “I don’t know, maybe until after we were done discussing the fact that Allura’s _alive and trapped in the astral plane without a body?_ ”

Lance pouts his lips thoughtfully. “You know,” he decides, “that’s fair. That’s a decent plan. I knew there had to be _some_ reason we made you the leader of Voltron.”

Keith scowls at him, but it’s not entirely without mirth, and Lance is floating way too high in the motherfucking sky to care anyway.

 

Less than half an hour later, they regroup at the dinner table once more. The second visit is a team effort.

Well—the third visit, technically. Lance can’t resist popping in for a hot minute as soon as he finishes talking to the team. He’s gotta fill Allura in on the conversation, okay? And tell her Adam finally agreed to a date with Shiro (she gasps, and her eyes light up, and she tells him to threaten Keith with bodily harm if he won’t promise to come give her the full report ASAP). Most importantly, he has to grab her by the hands and spin her around in viciously fast circles until she’s laughing too hard to breathe and they discover that yes, yes indeed, it’s absolutely possible to lose your balance and topple over in the astral plane.

Seated around a circular table, the five of them close their eyes. They go in together. They laugh, and hug, and Pidge and Hunk ask Allura fifty-million questions about how she transplanted Shiro’s astral consciousness into a physical body, and it’s _good_.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Drifting (as I dream)

 

 

On the pilot seat of the Blue Lion perches Lance’s helmet, the volume turned way up.

“How much longer?” Allura asks, knowing her voice is being projected through the helmet.

Echoing in the empty space all around her, Lance’s voice says, “Twenty more minutes.”

Allura sighs. So short a time.

Still, she’s grateful that Hunk managed even this much. These hour-long “phone calls," focused through Allura's connection to Blue using the power of a small Balmeran crystal, are far more convenient than astral projection, and they allow her to communicate with Coran, and others who can't astral project like the paladins.

“Okay,” she says. Then, more brightly: “That should be enough time for Shiro to tell me _all_ the details about his date last week.”

Coran’s voice says, “Oh, yes, indeed! I’d love to hear how it went!”

Shiro’s voice says, “Absolutely not.”

“I’ll remind you,” Allura says primly, “that I am speaking to you from the cold vastness of the astral plane, having recently sacrificed myself to restore the entirety of the universe across multiple timelines.”

There’s a pause. Then Shiro says, “Allura—I’m so sorry we didn’t find another way. What you’ve gone through…No one should have to bear as much as you have.”

Allura sighs. “Shiro, listen to me. I am okay. I survived.” She frowns at the tapestry of stars, picturing Shiro’s concerned expression. “You should never have had to feel so responsible for all of our fates. We all made it out,” she reminds him. “It’s time you stopped worrying. Although—you could perhaps stand to worry about more about yourself. Please, Shiro. You’ve been through so much as well. I urge you to take care of yourself, for once.”

“I’m inclined to agree with the princess,” Coran says.

Eventually, Shiro sighs. “Thank you, Allura.”

“Of course,” she says easily. She can imagine the concern still pinching his brow. This just will not do. Shiro’s endured his own trauma, and shouldered far more responsibility for the team than should ever have been expected of such a young man. Her tone light, joking, she says, “It’s just that, speaking as someone who’s undergone as much as I have, I believe I’ve earned a few measly details about your date night! Wouldn’t you say so, Lance?”

“Yeah, absolutely!” Lance’s voice is ever so slightly warped, filtered as it is through the blue paladin helmet and projected into space. Allura looks forward to him actually being here again. “Seeing as we’ve all been through _so much_ , Shiro. It really feels like the least you could do. Ease our suffering, you know? Help us through the struggle. Be there for your team—”

“Lance, knock it off.” Shiro’s voice is pure exasperation. It makes Allura smile.

“If it would help boost the attitudes of the young paladins,” Coran says ponderously, “perhaps it would be for the best.”

“Unbelievable,” Shiro says.

Allura grins widely. “It went well, I presume?”

“Keith already told us how stupidly you were smiling at each other when you got back, my dude.” Lance’s voice, a blend of wheedling and teasing. “You don’t really have much to lose, here.”

“It went fine. Okay?”

If she closes her eyes, Allura can almost see Shiro’s folded arms and tight jaw, and Lance’s shit-eating grin as he watches Shiro closely.

“He said he’d be willing to see me again. It’s not—like it was. But I think—” Shiro stops himself.

Lance’s voice is gleeful. “You think what, bud?”

Allura hears Shiro sigh.

Coran says encouragingly, “Go on.”

“I think it could be _something_ ,” Shiro says. “It’s almost like we’re starting over, but I think it’s—It could be something.”

Allura claps her hands together. “Shiro, that’s wonderful!”

“Thank you,” he says, sounding distinctly uncomfortable.

“I’d love to finally meet him. Properly, I mean. Now that the war’s over and you’re back together.”

“We’re not—,” Shiro says tightly. He sighs. "Yeah, okay. He’ll be glad to meet you too, I’m sure.”

Allura smiles, only a little dampened by the sadness of her distance from them all.

“You up for some logistics before the call’s energy runs out, babe?”

Allura tries to soak Lance’s voice into the very energy of her being, wanting to wrap it around herself like a physical thing and keep it with her.

“Sure,” she says. She can picture his nod, businesslike as he looks down at a tablet. She aches at not being able to see him.

“Okay,” he says, no-nonsense. “Pidge and Hunk called dibs on your next phone call to take notes about astral projection and consciousness transfer. That clone body is getting real close to ready. Let’s see…” He must be scrolling on the tablet. “Right. Keith said he’d come by for a visit later today, so that’ll probably be in a few hours. We’ll make sure we have a plan for who’s coming next by then so he can tell you when he drops in. Uh, that’s all from us. Coran had some updates for you on the Altean refugees, I think.”

“Yep!” says Coran.

Allura laces her fingers together, staring down at the glowy-edged shape of her gloved hands. “Thank you, Lance.” She knows her tone is too warm for a simple expression of gratitude for the update, too warm given the presence of the others also occupying the Blue Lion’s cockpit right now.

She hears Lance clear his throat, a disembodied sound among the stars. “No problem, Princess.”

“Right!” Coran says brightly. Allura’s cheeks feel hot, but she ignores it. “The refugee situation. Romelle has been working nonstop to help them adjust to the new planet and their new state of alliance with the Voltron Coalition. Hunk is becoming quite the expert on Altean cuisine, which is certainly helping quite a bit…”

Coran powers through a list of updates on her reborn home and her newfound people, and Allura is both thrilled by the news and crushed by the distance, her vision filled by nothing but stars.

 

 

Hours later, probably—it’s not as though Allura has any way of measuring time—Keith arrives, as promised. In one blink, the empty sky is filled by a figure standing in a glowing red ring that fades from under his feet over the next few seconds.

“Keith.” Allura smiles, rising from where she’d been seated, stretching to pass the time. “It’s lovely to see you.”

She embraces him aggressively, her joy only barely tampered by their first reunion a few days ago.

“You’ve been busy, I hear,” she says, pulling back but gripping him by the shoulders. She holds him there for a long moment before letting go.

Keith gives her a small smile. “Well. There’s a lot of stuff to figure out.”

She nods. “You’re working with the Blade, correct? Planning to gather the remains of the Galra population from across the universe?”

Keith sighs, running a hand over his mouth. “When you put it like that, it sounds so easy,” he says dryly.

She grins at him. “I’ve missed you.”

He winces. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited.”

This makes her roll her eyes. “It’s been, what, all of one Earth week? You don’t have to feel bad, Keith.”

“You’re trapped on the astral plane after saving the whole fucking world. I could probably manage to stop by more often.”

“Mm,” Allura says. “When you put it like that, it does sound easy, doesn’t it?”

He finally smiles more widely, shaking his head. “I—missed you, too,” he admits.

She blinks at him. Then smiles, a tiny warmth blossoming open in her chest. “Was that _so_ difficult to admit?”

He rolls his eyes at her. “It was. I hope you appreciate the effort.”

She punches his shoulder, feeling a fizz of energy against her knuckles as their forms touch. “I do,” she assures him. “Now. How is the effort going out there?”

Pidge promised her updates on the status of her new body every time she received a phone call or visit. Every single one. No matter how recent the last update had been.

“We’re getting close, Allura. _Really_ close.” His eyes are dark, the hard set of his jaw conveying his earnestness. While he rarely expresses himself in words, it’s been a long time since Allura’s needed words to be able to read him. “Actually.” There’s a spark in his eyes. “Pidge said not to tell you this, but—she thinks the body might be ready as soon as tomorrow.”

Allura’s lips part. She blinks. “ _Tomorrow?_ ”

Keith smiles gently. He punches her shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Tomorrow,” Allura repeats. “That’s so soon!”

She could be back on Earth by _tomorrow_. They have the teludav—she could visit Altea! She could be reunited with her planet, and her people, and her team. With Lance.

“I can’t believe it,” she admits. Her head spins.

“Hey.” Keith catches one of her hands, which helps return her to herself. “You have to act surprised when they tell you officially, okay?” He smiles, and she returns it weakly. “I think Lance wants to be the one to tell you. Don’t tell him I blew it, all right?”

Allura’s smile stretches to a grin, and she squeezes Keith’s hand. “No, of course not. I’ll be _so_ surprised! They won’t know what hit them.”

He laughs lightly, and Allura manages to talk him into sparring with her before he goes, and her chest feels like it might explode with joyous anticipation.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

“We couldn’t find another Altean who has the skill or the power to transfer someone’s consciousness,” Lance’s voice says when the call has been established a few days later. “So we’re gonna have to figure out how to do it through you again.”

“I don’t know if you’ve all noticed,” Allura says calmly, “but I’m currently stuck in the astral plane.”

“We think you should be able to do it through the Blue Lion,” Pidge’s voice says.

“It’s a good sign that we were able to set up the calls using your connection to the Blue Lion,” Hunk says. “I think you should be able to project your consciousness into your lion. It’s exactly the opposite of when we all project into the astral plane through our lions. From the Blue Lion, I think you can transfer your consciousness into the body.”

“…You _think_ ,” Allura says.

“Well…” Hunk hesitates. “Yeah.”

“Hunk showed his logic to most knowledgeable alchemists Coran could find,” Shiro’s voice says. “They all think this will work, Allura.”

“How hard can it be?” Lance says lightly. “It’s just like going into the astral plane, and then from there it’s just the same thing you did when you moved Shiro’s consciousness, except this time you’re inside a huge robot lion.”

“Not helping, Lance,” says Keith’s voice.

“No, it’s…I’m sure it will be fine,” Allura manages. It probably will be. Right?

“Okay,” Pidge’s voice says. “So, just try to project your consciousness into the Blue Lion. We’ll stay on the call.”

“I…” Allura says. “Yes, all right.” She nods. She licks her lips. “Um…Here it goes, I guess.”

She sits down cross-legged, hands resting on her legs. She closes her eyes. She focuses on her body, this energy-shape of herself. She imagines her quintessence as a glowing force.

She’s already connected to Blue by a skinny thread of connection, allowing her voice and those of her teammates to travel back and forth across the planes. She pours more quintessence along the thread, widening the connection.

Blue’s presence furls open in her mind, bright and welcoming. Allura leans into the connection, opening herself to Blue, picturing not her lion coming to her, but herself traveling to join her lion.

“Woah, there,” a voice says. It’s soft, but she thinks maybe it’s Lance.

“Shh,” says Pidge’s voice. “Don’t distract her.”

“Should we tell her?”

“Tell me what?” Allura asks, smiling, not opening her eyes.

Shiro clears his throat. “Blue just woke up, that’s all. Concentrate on sending your consciousness into your lion.”

Allura squeezes her eyes shut, her brow furrowing. _Come on._

She grits her teeth.

Then there’s a pulsing feeling, cool and warm at once, awareness flowing back and forth between her and Blue.

“Oh,” Allura gasps, opening her eyes. She sees stars—but not the stars of the astral plane. These stars are not purple-tinged, glowy-edged, or untouchably distant. They’re sharp and cold and clear— _real_. She feels Blue in her mind, nestled in her chest, warm and familiar, and knows she’s seeing through the lion’s eyes.

“Okay, Allura,” says Lance’s voice. “Blue just took off. Try to focus on sending yourself this way, not pulling her to you.”

Allura exhales, brow creasing. She tries to push rather than pull on her connection to Blue, that shimmering feeling within her.

The stars in her eyes spin as Blue turns her head left, then right. She soars higher.

 _She’s lost_ , Allura realizes with distinct, sickening clarity. _She’s searching for me, but I’m not there._

A raw noise of frustration tears from her throat. She _shoves_ at the connection.

Darkness. Stars. Glowy-edged, slightly purple stars.

Blue is gone from her heart, from her mind.

Allura swallows, feeling chilly all the way down to her toes.

“Hello?” she says into the void.

There is no reply.

Allura clenches her hands into fists. She closes her eyes tightly against a sudden burn of tears. “ _Fuck_ ,” she says, a harsh whisper.

She makes herself take a deep, slow breath. She focuses on reestablishing the connection, gently, not pushing against it.

A brush against her mind like cool water; Blue returns to her. Allura feels relief like an exhale.

“Hello?” she says once more.

At least three voices say her name, weighty with relief.

“’Lura.” It’s Lance’s voice, held carefully steady. “We lost you there, for a sec. You okay?”

She knows he’s speaking so calmly with intentional effort, wanting to soothe her. It makes her want to cry even more.

“Yes,” she says smoothly. “Yes, I’m fine. I am uncertain, however…” She inhales deeply, and exhales slowly. “I am not sure I’ll be able to project myself into the Blue Lion. Transferring a consciousness…It requires a great deal of energy. Too much for our connection to withstand, I’m afraid.”

Hunk’s voice. “The connection…broke?”

Allura closes her eyes, curling her fingers loosely. “Yes. It…snapped.”

There is silence from the team, which is fair, but makes Allura’s stomach twist anxiously as she stands alone in the huge, yawning black of the astral plane.

“Well.” Shiro sounds hesitant. “Do you think you should try again?”

Allura presses her lips together. “Yes, I suppose.” She’s pleased that she sounds composed rather than terrified.

And so she does try again.

Seven more times.

Each time the connection splinters away from her, she’s left so suddenly, jarringly alone that it makes her shudder.

Her voice is small when she says, after the eighth failed attempt, “I do not think it’s working.” She doesn’t say, _And I don’t think I can keep trying._

“Hey, it’s okay.” Lance. “We’ll figure out something else, okay?”

She presses her fingertips hard against her lips, holding in a swell of terror-loneliness-hope-love. She whispers, after swallowing hard, “Okay.”

She takes a deep breath.

“The energy is the constraint, I believe.” She holds her voice steady despite the burn of feelings in her throat, a skill she’s perfected over years of practice. “I think the connection is unable to support the massive amount of energy necessary for my consciousness to leave this plane. If there were a way to—to externally support the connection, perhaps it could work. I’m…I’m sorry I don’t have a better solution.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Lance says, overlapping Shiro’s, “Don’t apologize, Allura.”

She smiles weakly.

“Okay, power source,” says Pidge. “Got it. Hunk, we can figure that out, right?”

There is a pause.

“Hunk?” says Keith.

“Stop me if I’m not making any sense,” Hunk says slowly, “but what if we just…formed Voltron? I mean, Voltron’s more powerful than any of the lions alone, right? And if the Blue Lion was part of Voltron, maybe you could, you know, access all of that energy, too, Allura?”

She thinks on this, biting her lower lip. “It could work,” she decides. “It might provide a stronger anchor to the physical plane, as well. It—it could work.” She tries not to let the hope rise too powerfully within her ribcage, but it’s there regardless of her wishes, burning bright.

“How much time before we lose the call, Hunk?” Keith asks.

“About five minutes.”

“That’s enough time to give it a shot,” Keith says firmly. “I say we go for it.”

“All right, team,” says Shiro’s voice. “Let’s form Voltron.”

Allura stands amidst the stars, curling and flexing her hands to focus her buzzing energy, kept company by the sounds of her team scattering into their lions and booting up the systems.

“All right, Allura,” says Lance’s voice. “We’re gonna keep talking to you through the helmets. We’ll let you know when we’re ready for ya.”

She bounces on the balls of her feet. Stars, she hopes this works. She says, “Okay,” not trusting her voice to stay level if she says anything more.

“Here we go!” says Pidge.

Allura can hear the determined set of Lance’s jaw in his voice. “Let’s do this.”

“Okay,” says Shiro. “Is everyone in their lions?”

“Yellow Lion, checking in,” says Hunk.

“Green at the ready.”

“Blue’s ready to go!”

There is quiet.

Shiro says, “Keith?”

A noise of irritation.

“Keith, what’s going on?” Pidge asks.

“Fuck!” says Keith. “Guys, I don’t know what’s wrong. The Red Lion won’t let me—”

The call cuts out, the strain of focusing Allura’s connection to her lion into a vocal transmission between planes overloading the Balmera crystal powering the call. It will a few hours to recover.

The astral plane sprawls around Allura in every direction, stars upon stars upon stars upon distant darkness.

It has never felt so vast.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 


	4. Falling forward (back into orbit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [me, crying] the lion swap didn't make any seNSE by their oWN CANON EXPLANATION,,, why would the lions accept new paladins so easily; even then, how was allura's personality not a more logical match for the black lion than keith, AND a more logical match for the red lion than lance, honestly have you mET this girl, what th,,,,,,,,

 

 

“Lance, just disconnect from Red’s Bluetooth or whatever so Keith can connect.” Pidge’s voice is thin with exasperation.

“I don’t exactly know _how_ , thanks,” Lance snaps. “Seeing as last time, Blue just _locked me out_ , no disconnect needed.”

“Lance,” says Shiro tiredly, and Lance closes his eyes and astral projects right the fuck outta there.

 

Allura is frowning when he arrives on the astral plane, her eyebrows drawn together. “Hello, Lance,” she says calmly.

“Allura,” he breathes. “Hey. Look, we’re having a little trouble—”

“Yes, I know,” she says. “The Red Lion.” Her frown isn’t easing.

His own mouth pulling down, Lance walks over so he can reach out a hand. Distractedly, she takes it.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

She meets his eyes, and the frown finally breaks, replaced by a milder expression of concern. “I’m afraid I may know what’s happening with Voltron,” she admits.

Lance blinks. “Okay. That’s great. What’s wrong? How do we fix it?”

“Lance…” She looks away. “Have you spoken to Keith, recently?”

“Uuhh,” Lance says. “What?”

Allura presses her lips together, meeting his eyes again. “Look. When the Black Lion chose Keith, I don’t believe it was because she recognized him as the leader of Voltron.”

Lance raises his eyebrows.

“Well, the Black Lion’s connection with Shiro was never lost, as we believed it was. He was still with her, though he was trapped in the astral plane. And who was Shiro closer to than anyone else on the team?”

Lance narrows his eyes. “Keith, probably.”

Allura nods. “And when the Black Lion accepted Keith, Keith trusted _you_ more than anyone else on the team. That’s why the Red Lion opened himself to you.”

“Okay, I’m gonna stop you right there. There’s no way Keith trusted _me_ the most. Sorry, Allura, but your logic kinda falls apart there.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t believe it does, Lance. Keith trusted you. He still trusts you. Just like you trusted me with Blue; and just like I trust you, explaining your ability to connect with Blue even now.”

“Allura…”

“ _Lance_ ,” she says firmly. “I can feel it. When I connect with the Blue Lion, I can feel _you_ , still there. If there’s any reason you’re doubtful of Keith, however slight; if that could be influencing the Red Lion…”

Lance lets his head fall back, closing his eyes. “Allura,” he says. “No. Look, it’s—We’re fine, okay? Me and Keith are fine. It’s not that.”

He meets her gaze again, and she’s raising one eyebrow at him.

He groans. “Alluraaaaa…”

“I’m right, am I not?” The slightest of smiles is flirting with her mouth.

“ _Allura._ ”

“Lance,” she replies. She hits him in the shoulder. “Go talk to Keith. Resolve whatever this is so that I can _come back to physical plane of existence_ , Lance.”

He wrinkles his nose. “The things I do for love.”

Her cheeks go pink.

He kisses both before he leaves.

 

 

 

He’s welcomed back to the physical plane by everyone yelling at him. So, that’s nice.

“Okay,” he snaps. “Keith, I need to talk to you. Training room, five minutes.”

He takes a bathroom detour to angrily splash water on his face, and then finds Keith in the training room as requested with a mostly blank, vaguely irritated expression. Yeah, that seems about right. Aggravation flares in Lance’s chest.

“Look,” he says. “Allura says this is my fault. Red won’t open for you because I—” he waves his hand, “don’t trust you enough, or some shit. So. We gotta like, bond real quick, so I can get the Red Lion to like you again.”

Keith says, “What.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Tell me your deepest darkest secrets, or something. Give me something to work with.”

Keith says, “ _What._ ”

Lance huffs. “Look. Allura thinks you were able to pilot Black because Shiro trusted you so much. And I was able to fly Red because…Well, and Allura and I can both fly Blue because we trust each other. So, I gotta, like. Trust you more, or whatever. Come on. Be—trustworthy. Or something. Don’t strain yourself, but like.” He shrugs.

Keith looks…What is that? Angry? Pained? Constipated? Maybe a little of all three, Lance decides.

“You don’t trust me?” he demands.

Lance shrugs again.

Keith frowns. “I don’t get it. We’ve been able to form Voltron just fine recently. What changed?”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Dude, I don’t _know_.”

Keith just stares at him.

Lance groans. “Seriously, I don’t know! Maybe it’s because it’s like, a whole other level of trust to full-on give somebody your lion? Maybe it’s because I’m kind of a freaking mess right now, personally, so like. Sorry about that.” His mouth twists in an ingenuine smile. “I don’t know, man, maybe it’s because this is _Allura_ we’re talking about, and she’s fucking trapped on the _astral plane_ , and now would be a really bad time for you to decide you’re gonna fuck off to hang out with your Blade buddies instead of us.”

Keith’s eyes are round.

Lance blinks a few times. He says, “Uh.”

Slowly, Keith’s face shapes itself around a frown. “You don’t think I care about Allura just as much as the rest of you?” His voice is low.

Uh oh.

Lance rubs at the back of his neck nervously. “I mean…I didn’t mean that. I just…” He licks his lips. “Um.”

“Holy shit, Lance. I know I was never the most reliable black paladin, okay, but I’m not gonna just fly off the handle as soon as I’m back in Red.” Lance can’t tell if Keith is mad at him or pleading with him. “This is important to me, too. Are you  _kidding me?_ I want Allura back too, you idiot.”

Lance narrows his eyes at Keith.

He reaches out to Red, brushing against that burning hot consciousness. _Look, buddy. Please. I need you to trust Keith, okay? I trust him. I do. Come on, man._

Red doesn’t give him any sort of like, sign, or anything, and Red’s usually a pretty dramatic motherfucker, so Lance is pretty sure it didn’t work.

“I get it, okay.” Keith looks annoyed. “I can be… _flighty_. But I’m here for you guys when you need it, okay? And I’m here for Allura.” His expression settles into straight-up pained. “Look, me and Allura are…We have a lot in common. I mean.” He runs a hand back through his hair, agitated. “Watching helplessly as your parents walk out of your life? I’ve been there.” Pained shifts into tired, shoulders dropping and pinched brows relaxing.

“You know her, Lance,” Keith says. “She likes to—to train too hard, and to resolve problems by yelling at them, and to punch things until her body’s numb. We’ve done that _together_ before. Come on, Lance. I’m in this too, okay? She’s my family, too.” His gaze is dark and intense.

Lance rolls his eyes. “I’m _trying_ , okay?” he snaps, but even as he’s saying it, he feels Red shiver and shift against his mind.

He can feel, bright and sharp, a different consciousness as well. It’s not completely unfamiliar; he’s felt all of the other paladins’ minds when they form Voltron. Through just Red, for this brief moment, this is different. More sharply focused.

He feels _Keith_ feeling: _Allura, god, I’m so sorry—I can't believe you were ripped from your family_ again; _we’re getting you out of there, we are, I swear, whatever it fucking takes, hang on._

Lance takes a shuddering inhale, mentally recoiling from the ferocity of it.

Graciously, Red allows his retreat, maintaining his connection with Lance but letting him keep their connection distinct from Red’s simultaneous connection with Keith.

Lance blinks several times. “That…was.” He licks his lips. “Yeah, okay. I get it. I’m picking up what you’re putting down. That was—Yeah, yep. I shouldn’t have doubted you. Sorry, man.”

Keith is frowning at him again now. For fuck’s sake.

“No,” Keith says. “You should have. Or, I mean…It’s fair that you did. I did leave you guys. And I _did_ say that we shouldn’t even be friends.” His mouth twists. “It’s not like I ever really open up to you guys, so you didn’t know. So, yeah, it’s…fine. It’s fine, Lance.”

Lance takes a slow breath, head spinning. He’s got two lions in there, okay? And he just had a heart-to-heart with friggin’ _Keith_.

Keith’s eyes shift away, narrowing. “Can we go do this, now?” he asks. “I forgot how antsy Red always is.”

A laugh is tugged up from within Lance, easing the tautness in his lungs. “Yeah.” He can feel the Red Lion’s impatience needling at him, warm and constant. “He’s not exactly Guardian Spirt of Patience, huh?”

Keith grins, flexing his hands. “Gotta admit it: I’ve missed him.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lance returns to the astral plane for a wonderful, fleeting moment to tell her they’re about to form Voltron and get her out of there. His eyes glitter like crystal. She wants to grab him and stop him from leaving until she’s memorized the flecks in his irises and the curve of his nose and the patterns of his freckles. No, that’s not right—she wants him to leave, so that she can _follow_.

She waits for as long as she can bear.

They hadn’t yet formed Voltron, so she should wait, give them a moment to do so.

She feels as though the energy particles of her being might scatter into space at any moment, too excited to maintain configuration.

She closes her eyes and lets her consciousness wander.

There. There is Blue.

Joyously, she forges their connection, letting Blue’s familiar presence wash through her in a cool wave. Lance is there, flickering at the edges of her connection with Blue.

The others are echoes, half-there sketches. She can almost feel the other lions; the other paladins. They’re there like a forgotten word on the edge of her tongue, a picture gone hazy in memory.

She pours her energy into the connection slowly, hesitantly. Then she pushes against it with growing fervor, encouraged when she doesn’t feel the strain that means the connection is being overwhelmed.

Everyone becomes sharper. Lance, Blue, the rest of them.

Her vision becomes the Blue Lion’s, a panorama of night sky and an Earth skyline against it.

She is pushing her quintessence along the connection, pouring herself towards Earth—No. That’s not right. She’s pulling at the tenuous thread of that connection, her grip tight on Blue’s controls and sweat prickling the base of her spine as she leans forward in the seat—No. She’s flying into the sky, thrusters firing as she lifts her team into the air.

She is a majestic, mechanical beast. She is a member of ancient alien royalty. She is a boy from Cuba.

She drives her consciousness down the incorporeal bond, imagining it as delicate, gauzy stream of light that brightens as she propels herself down it.

She pulls her consciousness towards herself with a bizarre mental feeling of digging in with urgent fingers and not letting go, tugging and tugging to draw herself down into the cockpit. She _pulls_.

He pulls, and _pulls_ , and then his cheeks are searing, burning so bright and hot that it nearly hurts. He squeezes his eyes shut, clenching his fists on Blue’s controls, and grits his teeth. It feels like every one of his nerves is buzzing at a different frequency from all the others; his body is alight with a prickling sensation, a burn, a glow, a buzz like licking a battery.

Allura opens eyes she hadn’t realized were shut with a fervent gasp. It is audible in a voice not her own.

She blinks. She is armored in blue, her long limbs burning with overflowing energy, anxiety and anticipation swirling through her.

She feels Lance’s consciousness alongside her own, warm and bright and familiar.

She feels Allura’s consciousness alongside herself…Wait, no, she is Allura—She is Allura, she is lion, she is Lance.

“Ohhhh boy. Oh, man, this is weird,” says Allura’s mouth. Says Lance’s voice, from Lance’s mouth, driven by Lance’s thoughts.

“Oh,” breathes Allura, from Lance’s mouth, propelled by her own mind.

Blue’s jaw yawns open and Lance stands without prompting, heading for the starred blackness outside.

Allura tries to help.

They trip.

“Uh,” Lance says. “Turns out I hate this. I mean, I always wanted to get up close and personal with you, Princess, but this is _not_ what I had in—”

“Stop speaking,” she pleads in Lance’s voice. “Please. It only makes it worse.”

Lance makes a noise of frustration in her—in his throat. Oh, stars, this is strange.

She activates their jetpack, easing them down to the surface of the planet not far below.

Lance guides his legs across an empty Garrison runway, stumble-jogging to a table through an open hangar door supporting a motionless figure in a white nightdress.

Allura looks down at her own face, lifting a hand to cradle her own jaw softly. Her hands—No, Lance’s hands cup her unmoving face, skin warm despite the body’s eerie lack of life.

Their thumb brushes the Altean markings on not-yet-Allura’s face. Their other hand comes to rest over her heart. Allura can feel the gentleness of Lance’s touch from the giving end, rather than the receiving, which is strange as well as weirdly wonderful.

It’s becoming very bright in the nearly empty hangar. It grows difficult to see past the white, nebulous brightness. Allura’s—Lance’s—cheeks burn.

They close their eyes.

When Allura opens them, the brilliance is fading. On Lance’s cheeks, the blaze of turquoise fades to a soft shine.

Oh…

Lance’s cheeks. The marks on Lance’s cheeks, visible through his open helmet. Visible with—with Allura’s _own eyes_.

She inhales.

Air floods into her lungs, cool and dry, making her cough lightly. Her throat aches with it, and the feeling is _wondrous_. Her throat is her own. Her lungs are her own.

She can feel the Blue Lion at the edges of her mind, but Blue has receded to a soft shimmer in the background, a faint hum of presence. She thinks she can just feel the brush of Lance, also connected with Blue, but it’s so faint that she might be imagining it entirely. It’s of such great relief to her that she laughs through her prickling throat, feeling a smile stretch her cheeks for the first time in this particular body.

Coming feebly from Lance’s helmet before he rips it off and tosses it aside, Allura can hear the team yelling; she hears thrusters go quiet and heavy metal feet hit the ground outside.

She touches trembling fingertips to Lance’s cheeks. The lingering blue glow fades, leaving triangles of faint pink scar.

He’s crying, she notices, silent tears tracing fast, glimmering lines down his face.

“I believe,” Allura says slowly, trying out her new vocal cords, feeling the faintest rasp in the never-used throat, “this body may require some breaking in.” She pins him with a smirk she’s learned from his own mouth, raising one eyebrow. “Perhaps you'd like to help me _explore_ it, sometime.”

His cheeks flame magenta, which is wrenchingly adorable.

She responds in the only logical manner. One hand lingering at his cheek, she pulls him down by the back of the neck and kisses him.

His lips are salt-wet; the junction of his neck and shoulder is stress-tight beneath her touch. She kisses him until she feels the tension leave his neck with a soft sigh into her mouth, and then she kisses him some more.

“I’m not certain of the score between us, now,” she whispers eventually, her lips brushing Lance’s as she speaks. Her eyes are closed, their foreheads touching. “As far as saving each other’s lives goes.”

Lance’s shaky exhale fans her chin. “Well.” She _feels_ him lick his lips, and it shivers all the way through her. “I don’t think this one counts as a tick in my column. I mean, just having you back…that’s saving my life right now.”

She opens her eyes primarily to roll them, her mouth performing something halfway scowl and halfway smile. She punches his shoulder, ever so gently.

But with her eyes open, she sees that his smirk is half-hearted, more warm smile than smug joke, and the air leaves her brand new lungs.

She embraces him tightly and warbles, “Shut up,” into his shoulder, because she really doesn’t want to cry and all the feelings in her chest feel liable to split her ribcage right open with their vigor.

He laughs out a sob, or sobs out a laugh, and his arms come around her waist as naturally as breathing, solid and warm and physically corporeal and exactly what she’s been missing.

“I _love_ you,” she says, holding him, holding him, holding him.

The team begins to stream into the hangar, Keith in the lead in an all-out sprint and Shiro not far behind.

Lance makes another strangled sound in his throat, mouth moving around words that she thinks might be intended to be "I love you, too," if he were actually successfully accomplishing the skill of human speech at the moment.

"I love you," she says again, sniffing as the first tear streaks down her face. " _Thank you_."

He manages a garbled, "That's stupid. Don't _thank_ me."

So instead she presses a kiss to his forehead, then one to the scars on each of his tear-wet cheeks.

Then the team is on them, and truthfully, everyone's eyes are streaming too readily and their thoughts are too excitement-scrambled for much coherent conversation, after that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope this made sense idk if i shoulda left that one paragraph where it like wacko switches to sorta lance pov out of nowhere??? i wanted it to be like Weird and Thematic but it mightve just sucked in which case my apologies


	5. ((Epilogue)) This heart (that beats inside of me)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Lance!” Allura cries. “ _Duck!_ ”

He does so with no hesitation.

Her whip slices the air just above his lowered neck. There’s an electric blue crackle. The Galra sentry’s shoulders and head are cleaved from its body.

Grinning, Lance spins, slashing another sentry in half with his broadsword. “Thanks, babe.”

She winks at him before she turns, her back to him as they face the guards circling them. The bayard in her hand glows and transforms, becoming a traditional Altean staff that she grips in both hands and uses to thwack away an approaching sentry. She hears Lance fighting behind her.

“Dinner later?” she asks over her shoulder. She plunges her staff into a guard’s chest. It shudders to a stop, sparks crackling from the hole left by her weapon.

“You got anything in mind?” Lance asks.

Allura twirls her staff and dispatches three sentries at once, clearing a path to the wall of a nearby building. She turns and grabs Lance by the shoulder, pulling him back with her.

Backs to the wall, they keep fighting.

“I was thinking that noodle dish,” Allura says. With a flash, the red bayard becomes a blaster. Allura uses her staff to knock a guard away from Lance’s left side while he takes aim at a distant target.

“Which noodle dish, sweetheart?”

Lance takes the shot. Two guards fall, one behind the other. Show off.

“You know I can’t remember the names,” Allura says, annoyed. “Which one has the soup with it?” She spears a guard and kicks the feet out from beneath another one.

“You mean ramen?”

“I don’t _know_ what I mean!” she spits.

He laughs at her, the asshole. Her bayard flashes into a whip and she knocks a blaster from the hands of a guard approaching Lance’s unprotected side.

“I think you want ramen. We can do ramen.”

Allura sniffs. Lance shoots four guards in quick succession. “Thank you,” Allura says primly.

“Of course, baby,” Lance says, and drops a kiss to her scowling mouth before stabbing his sword through a sentry she hadn’t seen drawing near.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They have family dinners often. At least every four nights or so, at least a portion of the group gets together. Allura insists on it.

Lance helps Hunk in the kitchen, and Allura drags Keith and Pidge by the ears from wherever they’ve been busy in the universe, doing something or other important.

Adam is at most dinners, and teasing Shiro has become everyone’s favorite pastime. Lance would love to take credit for the bulk of this, but really, Allura is surprisingly relentless. Fuck, Lance loves her.

Family dinners look like a lot of things.

They look like Allura at the table with the rest of Lance’s family, laughing in utter delight as Veronica tells humiliating stories about Lance as a baby.

They look like takeout night at Adam and Shiro’s place, with quiet conversations and easy smiles.

They look like Hunk and Pidge and Lance curled on the couch eating pizza while Allura’s away at some meeting, the night ahead filled with games and movies and laughter.

Sometimes they look like just Lance and Allura sitting on the kitchen floor in pajamas with one candle lit between them, half because it’s romantic, half because Allura wanted to tell old Altean ghost stories.

Allura always does voices for the ghosts, booming, spooky tones, and Lance will grin crookedly at her and say something like, “I know your touch is ice-cold, but your body sure is hot.” Allura will laugh, and flail her arms trying to smack him for that stupidity, and eventually she’ll fall onto her back, still giggling, giggling as if she never watched her planet disappear from the sky, as if she never personally turned the switch that destroyed her father’s AI forever, as if she’d never killed, as if she’d never died and come back to life.

But she did, of course. She did all of those things. The past is why she’s who she is now, and why Lance is who he is, and why they’re who they are together. It’s why their family is a weird uncle, an engineer-slash-chef, two devious hackers, a not-so-alone lone wolf, and a scarred-up soldier whose dystrophy is slowly taking from him his mobility, but never his loved ones.

Tragedy has clawed at them all, but it’s made them into a family, and they will always run toward each other like rivers run back to the sea. And, well. Lance always has loved the ocean.

He pilots the Blue Lion, after all: Guardian Spirit of Water. Actually, he and his girlfriend both have a special connection with Blue.

It’s kind of their thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna do a WHOLE THING about team voltron working on Bonding more & they were gonna unlock new powers where they were even more connected than ever before and they could like swap lions however they wanted & they were like even more One Brain than ever before & it made voltron REALLY fast and unbeatable but also......yea i was too lazy, so !
> 
>  
> 
> Also, there was nowhere to wedge it into this fic but keith and hunk absolutely 100000% start dating within like a month after the war ends & allura’s back. Keith brings back a weird piece of tech from a BOM mission for hunk and hunk is like [gets teary] you got this??? For me??? And he does that thing we’ve seen MORE THAN ONCE IN CANON where he just grabs keith and keith makes his canon [oh my god is he about to kiss me?] face and yes. Hunk does kiss him this time. it’s Good.
> 
> Update: [here's a very small heith!](https://lesbianlura.tumblr.com/post/186294859828/autumn-im-greedy-but-can-you-do-1416-for-heith)


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